Finding happiness in running and sobriety

After dropping my kid off at his guitar lessons I was driving on to Starbucks to get some work done and NPR had a story on about beer. How beer is in ALL of American history. For some reason I got angry. I was angry that I would never be able to drink a beer without feeling off about it. I’ll never have a normal relationship with alcohol. Not that I ever did but still.

I guess, I’m more angry at myself than anything. Angry for letting alcohol take such a hold on my life. For trusting that booze was making me more fun and helping me to socialize. Booze and I had this agreement, you see. I would drink in moderation and it would make me the life of the party. I never held up my end so it never had to hold up its end. We let each other down.

This last Saturday we went to a friends house for a real life grown up party with a fourth of july playlist and everything. I struggled. It was my first real party with strangers where I was not drinking. I didn’t realize how much I relied on alcohol to help me socialize in these types of moments. I used it to calm the nervousness. Without it I felt like I was standing in front of a crowd naked trying to give a speech. Well, maybe not fully naked. Perhaps I had some fancy fourth of july tassels or something. I was tongue tied and awkward. So flipping nervous that I know I was using snarky comments to try to feel more secure. I am sure no one noticed other than I was the weird one and a little strange, but that’s okay. I’m learning.

I’m quickly moving out of the anger phase, some may call it mood swings but I like to refer to myself as a quick processor of moods, and into a bit of melancholy. I forgot how much it helps to write here. We are down to the final two months of this whole 365 sober experiment. You know, as well as I know, that I’ll never be able to go back to drinking again, and I need to give myself room to mourn that part of my life. I’m giving myself space to think about being sober forever. You can’t go from drinking half a bottle of vodka a night to being “okay” drinking. It will be way too easy to slip back into that habit/problem.

I’ve been thinking about moving this blog over to a new site with a shiny new name after my 365 days. We have a trip to Greece in September to celebrate the year and when I get back I see a new site to go with my new life. I don’t know if I want to be known as the sober girl, but I feel that it’s the perfect way to, not justify, but to show myself that I didn’t’ spend 33 years drinking in an unhealthy way for nothing. If this blog helps one person (and people have told me it has) then all of it was for something.